Last night, while in Glasgow, and as the weather was nice, I had a quick visit to the Southern Necropolis.
The Southern Necropolis opened in the South of Glasgow in 1840 as an affordable burial place for local people. It’s thought that over 250000 people have been buried here.
There is also a Commonwealth War Memorial within the cemetery with graves of 11 Commonwealth Service Personnel.
Above the grave of Magdelane Smith and her housekeeper Mary McNaughton, is a statue of a white lady. Magdelane’s husband, John Smith had this erected in their memory. In 1933, the two ladies died after being hit by a tram as they were heading home from church.
It’s said that the statue is haunted by the spirit of one of the ladies. People claim that as they are walking around the cemetery, the statue’s head is said to follow them. Another tale is that the statue will turn you to stone. To prevent this, you are supposed to run round the statue shouting ‘White Lady’ three times.
It’s a large cemetery, but as I walked around, I didn’t feel like it was following me, and as yet, I haven’t been turned to stone (and I didn’t run around it!).
There has also been tales of a female apparition seen floating round the cemetery wearing a white dress.
Another tale of the Southern Necropolis is that of the Vampire. In September 1954, a story went around the local area of a 7ft vampire with iron teeth in the cemetery who had eaten two boys. A policeman was called to a report of vandalism in the Necropolis and was met with up to 200 children as young as 8 armed with wooden stakes and knives., hoping to drive a stake through the vampires heart. Although more police turned up to try to convince the children to move on, they were still outnumbered, and the children stayed for hours in the hope of finding the vampire, only going home when it started to rain. It’s said that a local bonfire led to the children panicking that the vampire was burning more victims.
The children returned for the next 2 nights, and the story was reported worldwide.
The local police claim that 2 young boys were never reported missing or murdered.
The story is believed to have developed from horror comics like ‘Dark Mysteries’ and became a case of Chinese whispers from school playground gossip.
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